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Leather Conscious

Here at the Brynn Capella studio, in every corner you can find numerous wonderful leather hides. Leather is so different from manmade materials inthat they aren’t sold by the yard, but rather the square foot and oddly shaped. So when cutting you have to get creative and cut each bag individually.

Just the other day, Brynn pointed out to me something very intriguing about one of the scrap pieces. We found a branding stamp and this definitely took me by surprise. When looking at finished goods, sometimes you forget the source of the material. Seeing that branding stamp made me take a step back and really reflect on that subject.

Brynn once told me a story of how herself and a friend were looking at handbags when the sales woman pitches to them “That’s made of calfskin.” Her friend promptly recants, “That’s actually not a selling point.” It took the saleswoman by surprise, as too many it is.

Brynn Capella is a big advocate of the humane treatment of animals. She actually is a pescatarian, meaning she only eats fish. When Brynn first started out designing, her bags were all made from fabric. However, these weren’t the biggest sellers. For her bags to become more durable and for her brand to become more viable, she reluctantly started using leather. For the handbags, she only uses cow hides and this is rationalized by her knowing that we live in a world where we’ll never completely be without animal bi-products.

This coming summer, we want to launch a Vegan leather handbag collection. Brynn attempted using faux leather years ago, however, the quality of faux leather was very poor; making them not ideal for durable handbags and hard to work with. That’s why we’d love to try it again. But just knowing that the demand for Vegan leather these days is far greater, we still have to do our research.

So either way, we want to make sure the products we use are also not harming the environment. Also, we need to make more of an effort to make sure we are only using vegetable dyed leathers, natural tanning processes, and only cattle raised on old farmland, as opposed to newly razed rain forests. If anything, it’s a start.

I definitely admire Brynn’s beliefs and in a way she stands up for them through her art. I aspire to follow in those footsteps as a designer. Fashion has always been a form of art for me. I believe all forms of art should always be used as a platform to voice opinions and potentially impact change throughout society.